Category: World

An article in the Irish Times about the long history of same-sex marriage in the church.

These ceremonies had all the contemporary symbols of a marriage: a community gathered in church, a blessing of the couple before the altar, their right hands joined as at heterosexual marriages, the participation of a priest, the taking of the Eucharist, a wedding banquet afterwards.

Ooh, the irony.

(Hat tip: Winds of Change)

Update: As the discerning will be able to tell from the URL to the article, it’s a mirror on somebody’s personal page. However, when I searched the Irish Times website I found what appeared to be the same article, although I couldn’t read it all because it required a subscription.

Update #2: Donald Sensing links to a rebuttal.

An interesting article at Reason about self-appointed arbiters of taste.

[Norman Mailer] was watching astronaut Alan B. Shepard walking on the moon in 1971, when Shepard suddenly took out a secretly stowed golf club and launched a drive at the lunar horizon. Mailer was spiritually mortified. Humankind should have been humbled, literally on its knees, as it entered the cathedral of the universe; instead it drove golf balls through its windows. Whats the matter with people? Give them infinity, and they make it a fairway.

I’ve thought for a long time now that most anti-Americanism is really aesthetic in nature.

(Hat tip: Language Hat)

If you don’t read Lileks every day, shame on you!

Someone asked Kerry the question. Lileks:

I think it was a brilliant question. It doesn’t tell you who God favors – we all can have that debate. It tells you about the man answering the question. I ask you: who’s speaking his heart, and who’s crafting a response on the fly trying to cover all bases? One more question: take these two statements: “The liberty we prize is not American’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.” Or: “We pray that God is on our side, and we pray hard. And God has been on our side through most of our existence.” Which one best represents the face of America you’d like the President to show to the world?

Well, since everybody and his cow in the blogosphere are talking about Bush’s announced support for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between heteros, I’ll jump in with a few comments.

Con: I think neither government nor the church should be in the business of legislating anthropology. The church’s administration of marriage is a Medieval innovation with no basis in scripture. The only reason I can think of for government’s interest in marriage is for tax purposes. One can claim dependents who bear you no familial relationship, so why should the government care whom you claim as a domestic partner?

Pro: At least Bush is consistent in applying his positions, not bending to every whim of the electorate. Except . . . in this case the majority of the electorate is against gay marriage, so Bush gets it both ways. Taking the question to the legislature rather than the courts is the right way to go, although I can’t really imagine that the founders intended the constitution to define anthropology.

Also, I’ll ask the same question many in the blogosphere are asking: why isn’t anyone criticising Kerry, whose position on the matter is essentially the same as Bush’s?